Winter shoot a success!

Well that's that! We just returned from the winter wonderland that is Cawston BC, where our skeleton crew spent the weekend picking up the final scene of A Land that Forgets. Equipment has been returned, files have been backed up, and beers are in hand.

No more heavy lifting for this shoot! Hurrah!

Anyway, it was amazing up there, as you can see below. I won't say much more than that. Here's a little sneak peak at how things went:

Tyler shooting some behind the scenes super8...

Mennell. Man of many knots.

Portage.

Not bad eh?

Thats all for now!

All quiet on the eastern front.

Well it's been a while!

So I thought I might give you folks an update. Update is: we're still at it!

The hardest part about editing this movie is that it all looks so damn good, it's really hard to know what to cut. This is the first time I've strayed from 16mm in a very long time, and I was hesitant. I still wonder what it would have looked like had we had that option... But man, Red looks good. We got to use these new Japanese 35mm lenses that are basically a cheaper equivalent of the Cooke S4i's and I have nothing but rave reviews for them. They're sharper than Zeiss Superspeeds and are 100% colour matched! Amazing.

Anyway, enough geek talk. I'm editing slowly, in part because I'm simultaneously working on my master's degree, and in part because I think if you do things slowly enough you often make decisions that surprise you in exciting ways... does that make sense? It takes time to get to know a film at this point. You really have to dig deep and figure out where the heart is.

Thats my excuse anyway!

That's all I have to say for now. Hope all is well with you and I'll keep you posted! (no pun intended)

In case you were wondering how the footage looked...

Well, its been a few weeks since the shoot and I'm sure you've all been on the edge of your seats wondering how it went...

So I'll give you an idea. Here are a few quick frame grabs... Not bad if I do say so!

Featured above is our lovely Mrs. Takeda (played by Theresa Laverty). Who performed tremendously, and put up with all of us like a saint as we slogged through the longest and hottest day.



It was not the easiest shoot. It was hot and we had a lot a lot of shots. But with our amazing cast and outstanding crew, we got through it without so much as an epi-pen incident, and things are looking smashing.


Our little rising star Caleb Surface turned out to be a real gem. A master of improv and a real ladies man to be sure!


And of course, our young lead, Dagan Nish, the most considerate and talented actor we've ever had the pleasure of working with, did us all proud as you will all soon see :)


That's all I can tell you for now. Stay tuned.

Similkameen Valley, who woulda known?

With locations like these how can we go wrong? I have resorted to my cheap point and shoot digital camera for these most recent location pics and even so, they still look great.

Here are two examples of where we will be shooting a couple of the scenes in the film. It's always an adventure to source out locations, and these were no exception. The bottom one was especially challenging, but here it is! And isn't it wonderful?

The look of the film is constantly changing as we go from concept to reality, dreams to practicality, but one thing is for sure, it's going to be beautiful.

You may have noticed that our locations have moved from Bella Coola to the Similkameen Valley. This has mostly been due to financial and logistical reasons, but in the end the arid feel of the Okanagan re-enforces the scripts undertones in a way that is actually quite wonderful.

Bella Coola is a magical place though and someday I will find the right script for it.

Wow! Our new canoe is being built!!!

The thing I love about filmmaking is that no matter what the film is about there is always one task that must be surmounted where you find yourself figuring out how to do something you would never have done otherwise.

And this film is no exception. One of the biggest challenges and most wonderful parts of this film is that the secondary protagonist is a cedar strip canoe. Now this canoe must not only be beautiful, but it must go from being derelect and worn out to being restored all within 5 days of shooting. Or so it would seem... But AHA, you say, what if you had two canoes?!

And that is what we shall have. This is the secret reason that I wrote this film, to see this process unfold. I am in love with these canoes. And hopefully soon you will be too.

Feature it!

Exposure! Damn this stuff is time consuming.

I know you're probably sick of hearing about us by now, but if you have a moment, zip over to our indiegogo page, scroll down to the bottom right and hit the "feature it!" button.

This tells the admin that you want our project to show up on the first page of the indiegogo site, which gives us much more exposure and I'm going to say quadruples our chances at meeting our fundraising goal.

We had auditions this week and they went pretty well. It was actually super fun. We hadn't been down that road for a while. It's a weird thing to have people come in one at a time and perform for you... I won't make any announcements yet because we haven't informed the cast who they are, we'll be getting down to that later this week.

In an attempt to make this blog a little more blog-like I'm going to try talking about my feelings!

So I'll be honest, since we started this crowdfunding thing, I've begun to feel the looming pressure of having outside funding sources, even though it's mostly been family and friends. It raises the stakes for the entire project... It's weird because when you invest 3 or 4 grand of your own money, somehow it doesn't have the same effect. There's a constant need to justify the film, to say to people ya it's worth the money and it's going to be great! When it's your own money you can say, I'm not sure if it's worth it but I find it interesting and I just want to do it anyway...

But when you just can't afford it yourself, you gotta start believing that it's always worth it. And I think it is. And if other people believe it to that shouldn't be a stress, that should be a relief. And in the end it's all just make-believe so I try to remind myself to relax and enjoy it.

As Adrian would say "Holy Moses girl! Don't sweat the small stuff!"

A Land that Forgets

GCP is excited to announce the launch of our new project page on Indie Go Go. Come check it out to find out more about our upcoming film "A Land that Forgets".

We are super excited to be preparing for another great shoot! A Land that Forgets goes into production on July 23rd, 2010.

Wahoo!

Watch our film online at Vimeo

“It’s not as if we haven’t been here for a while...” is now available for viewing online through our Vimeo page.

INAF Wins Best Dramatic Short!

Glass Curtain Pictures is proud to announce that “It’s not as if we haven’t been here for a while...” has won best short drama award at the 2010 DIY Film festival in Hollywood, CA!